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Digital bank Revolut is looking to hire a tech lead to build a crypto exchange, according to a new job posting.

• The successful candidate will be “leading a technical team to architect and build Revolut Crypto exchange,” according to a job ad posted on LinkedIn on Thursday.
• Revolut is looking for experience in building order-matching engines such as those used by crypto exchanges.
• The U.K.-based fintech, which has a $33 billion valuation, has been offering crypto buying and selling services for several years. If finally allowed users to transfer their coins elsewhere in May this year.
• CoinDesk reported in September that Revolut was looking to launch its own token akin to Binance’s BNB, something that would seem to tally with launching its own exchange.
• Revolut did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
• The neobank has more than 16 million customers worldwide and offers exposure to more than 50 digital tokens.

Read more: Revolut Launches Commission-Free Crypto Trading for US Investors

Chainlink, the biggest provider of data to smart contracts, said the value of investments dependent on its feeds has climbed to $75 billion.

• The total value secured (TVS) has soared from $7 billion at the end of last year.
• Chainlink’s oracles feed data such as weather and sports results from external sources to blockchains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Avalanche. The data allows decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to trigger their smart contracts when conditions are met.
• “Without trusted price data to trigger smart contracts, it is impossible to build DeFi applications, and we do not think it is a coincidence that the rate at which Chainlink has been able to bring new market data onto blockchains has been the rate at which developers have been able to build exciting new DeFi apps,” said Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink.
• In August, Swisscom, Switzerland’s largest telecommunications provider announced it is launching a Chainlink oracle node to provide data for DeFi.

Read more: Chainlink Unveils Crypto ‘Keepers’ and Anti-Fraud Blockchain Bridges

Online trading and brokerage company TradeStation Group said Thursday it will become a publicly traded company through a combination with Quantum FinTech Acquisition Corporation (NYSE: QFTA), a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

TradeStation began offering crypto trading to its customers in May 2019, and last year partnered with exchange ErisX to integrate ErisX’s order book into its subsidiary, TradeStation Crypto.

The SPAC transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2022. TradeStation will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “TRDE.”

The transaction values the combined company at an implied pro forma enterprise value of approximately $1.43 billion. After the deal closes, TradeStation parent company Monex will own approximately 80% of the combined company. TradeStation’s existing management team will remain in place.

The deal will provide $316 million of cash before paying expenses, assuming there’s no redemption of any public shares of Quantum FinTech. The total includes $201 million in cash held in Quantum FinTech’s trust account and $115 million through a private investment in public equity (PIPE), or a private sale of Quantum stock. The PIPE includes $50 million from Monex and $50 million from Galaxy Digital, plus investments from XBTO Ventures, LLC and Appian Way Asset Management.

The combination structure involves a merger between a new subsidiary of TradeStation and Quantum Fintech, with Quantum becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of TradeStation. Each Quantum FinTech share held by the PIPE investors and sponsors will be exchanged for one common share of TradeStation. Quantum shareholders who don’t redeem the public shares will receive more than one TradeStation share.

“There are numerous reasons why TradeStation is, in our judgment, the most attractive company we looked at in the fintech/financial services sector, and we looked at quite a few,” said John Schaible, chairman and CEO of Quantum FinTech, in a press release. “TradeStation owns its core trading platform technology, and it executes and clears its customer trades across all of the major asset classes it offers. This high level of control over both its technology and operations gives TradeStation valuable agility and flexibility in how it runs and grows its business, as well as the ability to scale efficiently.”

European crypto asset manager CoinShares has published its interim Q3 financials.

The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose to £88.8 million ($120.2 million) in the period, up from £62.8 million ($85 million) in the previous quarter.

For the whole of 2020, CoinShares’ adjusted EBITDA was £22.1 million ($29.9 million). According to the filing, the Q3 results have positioned the company for its strongest-ever performance over a nine-month period.

The continuation of the firm’s positive financial performance in Q3 comes as the cryptocurrency market posted significant value recovery after a 50% decline in May.

“This performance demonstrates our business model’s resilience and ability to scale; we continue to take advantage of the evolution seen in the wider industry and translate it into total comprehensive income and balance sheet growth,” said Jean-Marie Mognetti, CoinShares’ CEO.

The firm’s performance is also indicated in the company’s earnings from management fees with £55.1 million recorded in the filing — almost three times the size of the revenue collected from fees in 2020.

Institutional inflow into crypto investment positions has been on the rise in 2021 with more big-money players allocating funds to cryptocurrency products.

CoinShares’ assets under management (AUM) also grew in Q3 with and stands at £2.9 billion ($3.9 billion) as of the period ending September 30. The company’s AUM at the end of 2020 stood at £1.7 billion ($2.3 billion).

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

On November 4, crypto mining firm Bitfury announced that it had hired Brian Brooks as CEO, replacing founder and long-time chief executive Valery Vavilov.

Vavilov will become “Chief Vision Officer” as well as chairman of Bitfury’s board. 

In addition to mining and ASIC manufacturing, Bitfury has operations in blockchain analytics, network security and enterprise software. Founded in 2011 in Amsterdam, the firm is one of the older players in the market.

Brooks most recently headed Binance.US, a position that he left in August amid no small amount of controversy, with reports of conflict with global Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao over a U.S. funding round. 

Prior to Binance, Brooks served a 7-month tenure as acting Comptroller of the Currency, presiding over the leading regulator for national banks in the U.S. In that role, he pushed out a number of new authorizations for the integration of cryptocurrency in the banking system, including several fintech charters for banking firms. 

The brief tenure endeared Brooks to the crypto world even as it provoked hostility among a number of lawmakers, particularly Democrats in the House of Representatives, who accused him of overstepping his authority in the interests of an industry to which he would soon return.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) were little changed over the past 24 hours, though currencies associated with Solana and Polkadot – both alternatives to the Ethereum blockchain – were outperforming along with gaming tokens like Axie Infinity’s AXS.

Bitcoin was down 2% in the last 24 hours. The price briefly dipped Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s announcement of a plan to taper, or cut back, its $120 billion monthly in bond purchases starting this month.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value dropped as low as $60,530 at around 6:00 p.m. UTC on Wednesday, but recovered shortly and traded back above $63,000.

“The fact that bitcoin is consolidating in a range just under its all-time high is significant,” said Jason Deane, analyst at Quantum Economics. “This sets a strong support for the next move upwards. The longer it remains in place, the more confidence the market has that it will hold.”

The number of bitcoins on exchanges is at its lowest in three years, suggesting investors are not willing to sell.

“Supply on exchanges continues to fall as fast as the asset’s fundamentals continue to improve, inviting a bullish outlook,” said Deane.

Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, reached an all-time high on Wednesday, hitting $4,628. Ether is up 28% on the month, but down 1.5% on the day, trading around $4,500.

“This is a reasonable price correction,” said Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi Group, in an email to CoinDesk. “The price is still at a high level, and the trading volume is at an average level.”

“Currently, it is a very mixed market, with coins moving pretty uncorrelated from each other,” said Patrick Heusser, head of trading at Crypto Finance AG. This presents more trading opportunities, Heusser said.

With gas fees rising on Ethereum by 2,300%, investors have piled into coins associated with so-called layer 2 solutions that offer faster and cheaper transactions, according to a separate CoinDesk report.

SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain, hit an all-time high of $246 on Wednesday and the token is up 5% in the last 24 hours. Polkadot’s DOT is up 7% and Cardano’s ADA remains little changed in the last 24 hours.

“There’s a bunch of ETH look-alikes,” said Paul Eisma, head of trading for the crypto firm XBTO. “Solana has definitely taken the lead.”

All-time highs for SOL and ETH helped push the combined market cap of all cryptocurrencies above $2.75 trillion for the first time on Wednesday, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Play-to-earn tokens also experienced an uptick in price over the last 24 hours. Axie Infinity’s AXS token is up 11%, trading just below its all-time high of $162, and The Sandbox’s SAND reached an all-time high on Tuesday.

This sector as a whole is expected to continue to benefit from the inflow of capital and the growing interest from mainstream vendors, according to Denis Vinokourov, an independent crypto analyst. He said in a LinkedIn post that “a whole host of names are trying to come up with their own versions of ‘metaverse’ and incentive programs.”

Vinokourov attributes Axie’s latest gains to the launch of Katana, a decentralized exchange that allows users to easily swap between the various assets within the Axie Infinity ecosystem. Users can now trade among Axie Infinity, Smooth Love Potion (SLP), USD coin (USDC) and wrapped ETH (WETH), according to the press release.

Alameda Research and Lightspeed Venture Partners have led a $21 million Series A funding round for gaming studio Faraway.

Faraway said in a press release Thursday the other participants in the funding round included a16z, Sequoia Capital, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital and Solana. Faraway raised an $8 million seed round earlier this year, which was also led by Lightspeed.

The investment will be used to integrate the Solana blockchain into Faraway’s most popular gaming title, “Mini Royale,” a battle royale-based first-person-shooter game similar to Counter-Strike.

The browser-based game will utilize an in-game economy compatible with FTXPay and Solana non-fungible tokens (NFT), becoming the first multiplayer video game to do so, according to the press release.

With Web 3 gaming still in its infancy, investors have clamored to fund up-and-coming studios that specialize in virtual reality and play-to-earn structures.

Read More: Sequoia Games Brings Augmented Reality to Board Games Using Algorand Blockchain

The multiplayer gaming sector has yet to see the same attention from investors, however, despite having a long history of in-game economies centered around digital collectibles.

Investors’ involvement to create a new era of gaming centered around blockchains and NFT marketplaces comes at a time filled with tension between multiplayer gaming communities and the centralization of the industry.

“Blockchain technology will unlock the potential for truly player-driven, open economies and will usher in the next wave of gaming and virtual worlds,” Faraway CEO Alex Paley said in the press release. “Our goal for both current and future games is to create extremely fun and social games with open economies, giving players true ownership over their in-game assets and a true voice in how the game evolves over time.”

A representative of Faraway told CoinDesk that Mini Royale is expected to be integrated with Solana’s blockchain in December.

The further institutionalization of bitcoin has made it less attractive to more opportunistic traders, according to Genesis’ most recent quarterly report. 

The report, which covers activity across the firm’s lending, trading, and custody businesses, noted that bitcoin demand trended downward because of a drop in opportunities for traders to profit from market inefficiencies. 

“While this paused in Q2, it resumed over the third quarter due to the continued GBTC premium invasion and flattening of the basis curves,” the report said. 

To be clear, Genesis did note that interest in the futures-based bitcoin ETF was strong in the traditional finance world, with a number of global investment banks and $100 billion asset managers relying on Genesis as a CME futures liquidity provider. 

At the same time, the opportunity to cash in on spreads between the price of bitcoin in the spot and futures market has “declined significantly” due to this “shift towards institutionalization,” per Genesis.

Meanwhile, the firm reported an increase in activity in the decentralized finance market as well as in other burgeoning Layer 1s. To meet that demand, Genesis launched new bilateral options in cryptocurrencies like Solana, Luna, and dYdX’s native token. 

“While the alt rotation playbook reverted back to deploying capital towards BTC and ETH towards the end of Q3, the adoption of L1s opened up more opportunities to diversify portfolios,” the firm said. 

In total, Genesis traded more than $37 billion across derivatives and spot in Q3. 

Source: Genesis Q3 report

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

This episode is sponsored by Kava, Nexo.io and Market Intel by Chainalysis.

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Lower Trading Volatility in 2021 Crypto Bull Runs Signals Maturing Market

Ether to Extend Outperformance Versus Bitcoin Following Recent Breakout, FSInsight Says

Market Wrap: Bitcoin Holds Above $60K After Fed Taper Announcement

Federal Reserve to Taper Money Printing That Fueled Bitcoin Bets

Stocks Futures Inch Up Ahead of Earnings From Moderna, ViacomCBS

European Equities Rise After Fed Confirms Tapering Plans

Featured Story: Why Everyone Is Mad at Sam Altman’s Worldcoin

This episode was edited & produced by Adrian Blust.

Users of crypto wallets Metamask and Phantom, as well as the crypto swap platform Pancake have been targeted in a crypto phishing scam involving at least half a million dollars being stolen, according to a Check Point Research (CPR) report.

• CPR said that in the past few days there have been “multiple events” in which hundreds of crypto wallet users have had their funds stolen while trying to download and install well-known wallets, or change their currencies on crypto swap platforms such as PancakeSwap or Uniswap.
• The scam campaigns used search engine advertisements to target crypto wallet users. They then employed fake URLs and websites to allow scammers to steal wallet passwords and access crypto funds held in wallets, said CPR.
• The report gives an example of how an attacker uses a Google ad campaign to steal the user’s private key and access their MetaMask wallet by giving them a phrase that allows them to steal the funds upon transfer.
• CPR advised crypto wallet users to “refrain from clicking on ads and only use direct, known URLs.”

Read more: MetaMask Hit 10M Monthly User Mark in July With Asia Leading Growth